I agree with your observations, but not with you conclusions.
It's true that, especially for touch-screen capable devices, Windows 8 satisfies the casual user and less computer-savvy. The only reason these people find it usable is the ease of which one can launch a basic selection of apps from the Metro UI. It's like having a big program launcher / menu system bolted onto the front of everything.
The millennials are pretty fixated on "cloud based services and apps" right now. You could give them a modern day dumb terminal with good web surfing capabilities and all of the popular sites made into icons and they'd be happy. (Well, you might have to make it run MS Word and Excel too, since they typically learned those programs in school and don't like the web-based alternatives so much.)
Your suggestion of using Windows 7 instead and the response that it's "for old people" sounds like the dismissive behavior I'd get from our pre-teen kids... but doesn't mean the entire face of computing has changed.
People who actually want to do real work with a computer aren't exactly praising the Windows 8 UI as the future. Microsoft is trying really hard to sell it that way, but it's struggling. The whole Nokia merger and the in-fighting surrounding it indicates MS is a company desperate to find other revenue streams. Basically, it doesn't really believe in Windows 8 itself -- so it wants to bolster it by retaining some leverage in the mobile phone space.
I may be one of those geeks who "used to laugh at those who refused to adapt to change", but back then, the changes were truly innovative leaps forward. When you tried to get people using MS-DOS to move to a GUI environment that supported multi-tasking, automatic support for all of the RAM in the machine, cross-application support for printers and audio devices and SO much more, it was a leap worth taking. When I compare Windows 8 to Apple's approach with OS X for desktops and iOS for smaller devices, the Apple method makes a lot more sense to me. Win 8 isn't really giving me back anything that makes it worth re-learning where they hid all of the settings and options.
If a law is made this quickly, it could ALSO mean it just seems like such a common sense thing to the people involved, there's really nothing to argue about.
Personally, I think I'd rather have legislation made this way (flawed though it may be) than people passing multiple hundred page long bills that NOBODY could read through and fully understand before they're voted on.
Simple, quickly passed legislation can also be easily understood by juries and amended, as needed. The massive stuff with hundreds of hidden side-effects just catches people by surprise, time and time again, for decades to come.
How would this even be an issue? When you shoot video, do you irresponsibly just upload it to the Internet for public viewing, immediately, without so much as previewing what you filmed first?
I've always assumed that 80% of the work of recording video is the editing you do AFTER you're captured the initial footage!
IMO, at 30, you're right in the "zone" as far as the age group companies like to hire for computer support or network/server administration.
(Honestly, I think there's greater interest in hiring younger for software development, due to the mentality that you can hire talent cheap if you catch them shortly after they're out of school. Plus, they haven't been in the field long enough to be "old dogs that know a bunch of tricks you have to get them to un-learn" for your particular environment.)
It sounds like part of your question relates to which technologies you should focus on learning? One trend I have noticed is that mail servers are becoming more and more centralized. Most growing companies want to eliminate the in-house mail server(s) and sub-contract that out. With the growth of mobile devices that get attached to corporate email, it's nice to offload that bandwidth usage to a 3rd. party, among other things. This has the side-effect of making knowledge of setup/configuration/maintenance of mail servers (like Exchange) a skill-set that gives you a full-time job working only with email. If you really like email and mail servers, great. Go this route and get hired on at one of the cloud-based email services out there! Otherwise, I'd only worry about knowing it from the client side.
Every company I've ever worked at could stand to have more I.T. people on staff with good training skills and an interest in doing it. The "gotcha" there is that usually? It boils down to a situation where you won't really get to do as much of that as you and your co-workers would like because management has other ideas about what's the most valuable use of your time and company resources. (Remember, if you decide to schedule a "training session" for a big group in one of the conference rooms? Now the productivity of ALL of those people attending just dropped to 0 during the time you've got them as a captive audience in there. You're also occupying the room, which may also pose at least some level of inconvenience -- especially if employees regularly book the room to pitch a service or product your company makes to its clients. You'll probably also find that without providing some food and drink, it's tough to get people to show up for such things... so again, another expense for the company.)
I've always found that good communication skills and ability to teach the software is a really valuable skill, but you'll primarily wind up using it randomly, when assisting people by phone or "one on one" at their desks with issues. If you're lucky, a hiring manager will give you more consideration than "the next applicant" because of a background teaching technology. But it will become "just another thing you do that's kind of taken for granted" once you're hired.
Especially if you're getting hired via a recruiting firm, they're overly fixated on industry "buzzwords". Certain items are considered "hot" at any given time. For the last couple years or so, "virtualization" was a big one. If you could say you had experience using VMWare ESXi or any of the other products allowing virtual servers, it was a big plus. "Cloud" knowledge is another one. IMO, this is really a bunch of nonsense, because almost ALL the cloud-based services have easy to use web based control panels. Anyone with good general I.T. skills and knowledge can master any of them in short order. Mastering virtual server products is a little more difficult and useful as a real skill.... but again, many places just treated it like it was a big deal, only because of a one-off desire to reduce the number of servers in a server room. Once somebody moved all 7 or 8 of those outdated physical servers onto one virtual server and got them running well? There wasn't a whole lot more to do or know to maintain that.... so other I.T. skills become more important again.
The Radio Shack I knew and loved, growing up, was one of the early computer stores, among other things. The TRS-80 line of 8-bit computers, despite being much maligned by proponents of competing brands ("Trash 80" as they liked to call them), were solid, reliable and capable computers in their day. I *still* know several people who have their old TRS-80 Model 3 or 4 computers in good, working condition to this day. (If you purchased that optional dust cover Radio Shack used to sell for them, and used it religiously, the machine might even LOOK almost like new!)
The parent poster is also correct that Radio Shack home stereo equipment was pretty good stuff, all in all. Like every brand, they sold a few "duds" too, but products like the old Minimus 7 die-cast metal bookshelf speakers were even critically acclaimed in magazines like Stereo Review. (They eventually got renamed Optimus 7, with the 77 being a larger wattage version with about an inch larger woofer.) I believe some of their component stereo receivers were made for them by Pioneer, but designed custom for Radio Shack so not just identical to Pioneer models for sale elsewhere.
Radio Shack used to also be one of only a few really good "go to" places for things like police scanners, weather radios or shortwave radios. Sure, other brands were arguably "better" but were typically only available by mail order or at specialty shops. At least with Radio Shack, you could recommend a particular one and know anyone could run down the street and grab it at their nearest store. The availability of some of these also meant readily available hardware modifications. (I remember downloading instructions on how to cut one capacitor off of a board in one of my Radio Shack scanners to unlock the ability to scan a whole portion of the frequency spectrum that was otherwise locked out. Pretty cool enhancement for nothing but the cost of my time to open it up and cut one thing.)
When they tried to change into a mini Best Buy type of store, they really went downhill fast, IMO. I guess that was an attempt to appeal to the masses, who were less interested in electronics projects and hacking, and more interested in buying off the shelf accessories and gadgets. But too many retailers already did that better than Radio Shack ever could with their smaller stores.
At this point, I agree that R/S may need to cut back and close quite a few stores -- but it could do well to focus the remaining ones on electronics for true hobbyists and electricians, IMO. Drop the prices so they're really competitive, especially on items like ethernet cabling and jacks. Carry a full line of quality tools like phone linemen's handsets, punch-down tools and "fox and hound" toners/probes, but sell them below the high prices of places like Greybar! IMO, there's no room to make any money selling computers anymore. R/S just needs to step out of that area -- other than maybe stocking a few common items like USB memory sticks or SD cards. But definitely go back to carrying a full line of soldering irons, solder remover tools, maybe an R/S branded oscilloscope....
I'm more than happy to defend the concept behind crypto-currency... unregulated by governments and all!
What I find a bit humorous are all the people who were so greedy and eager to make a quick buck on bitcoin that they immediately exchanged considerable amounts of traditional, govt. backed funds for it, only to park the bitcoin in one of these public exchanges. Then they're all happy and excited, until the site gets hacked and their bitcoin disappears (or an unscrupulous operator take the money himself, pretending it was a hack involved, and shutters the site). All of a sudden, "the sky is falling" because nobody is there to come to their rescue, to get back the lost crypto.
ALL of this was perfectly well known as risks of using a decentralized currency from day 1! By keeping the bulk of your crypto in a personal encrypted wallet and making sure you have backups in safe places (on a USB stick kept in a safe deposit box, perhaps?), you would never encounter any of these issues.
IMO, the only "right" way to trade on these exchanges is to push funds in only when you're ready to trade them. Do your trade, and extract your resulting funds again, ASAP. Sure, you *might* lose that money if something goes bad in the middle of your transaction -- but that's, IMO, a much more acceptable risk.
Start treating bitcoin more like cash, people! Would you just hand, $10,000 or $20,000 in cash to some stranger, because he promises you he'll enable you to buy something else with it of greater value, if you just leave it with him for a while until the right moment comes along?
The 3 auto makers offering it first are all high-end luxury brands. That means the "early adopters" are the same people who have plenty of disposable income to have already purchased superior options.
(Personally, if I had they money to be driving around a Ferrari, I would already have a really nice custom stereo system in it, which would surely have a dedicated GPS system in it. Why get stuck in a situation where you can't find some place you need to get to, just because you accidentally left your phone at home or at work?)
This integration makes a lot of sense, but I think the people who will get the most out of it are the masses driving inexpensive economy cars, minivans, pickups, and mid priced sedans or sporty cars. (Again, the wealthy have the means to pay for "concierge" services by phone where they can make requests of a live operator who answers. Why settle for an automated system like Siri?)
Not to sound like a jerk -- but when you have to start worrying that accepting a software upgrade on the iOS side will mean it breaks functionality with the piece on the OS X side, that's your sign that it's time to upgrade OS X.
I know all about the people clinging onto Snow Leopard because of either a claimed need for Rosetta, or being one of those systems that was kind of "caught in the middle" when things were transitioning -- with a "Core" series CPU, yet one that's only 32-bits.
But I don't think you can really expect Apple to keep supporting your environment any longer, if you're still holding on to OS X 10.6. Like it or not, Apple has pretty clearly been following a trend of giving support only for the current revision of OS X and the previous version. So far with Mavericks, they've actually been extending that support back 2 versions (both Lion and Mountain Lion), but regardless? When you're a full 3 versions behind the current one, you really shouldn't expect Apple to give you answers other than "upgrade" when you complain about a lack of security patches or functionality with newer software releases.
Personally, I don't even believe Rosetta is needed by many of the people who think it is. There's a free product called SheepShaver out there which emulates classic MacOS even under Mavericks, and I know of at least one project out there that uses it as the "engine" to run the old WordPerfect for Mac software on today's machines. So that's one way to make even pre PPC era software run on a new machine.
I'm sure there are other niche cases, such as older software synthesizers that never got upgraded past the old PPC versions, but why would you even need such a machine to stay online all the time, and therefore need the latest security fixes? Just leave it on Snow Leopard or whatever and use it as a stand-alone music creation box.
The quality of his analogy isn't really that relevant. The fact is, he's right.... The way theft is handled with just about every other piece of consumer electronics gear you can think of is to make the OWNER responsible for its safe-keeping. If it's stolen, you can potentially make an insurance claim, and certainly you can file a police report. But giving a third party (such as the cellular carrier) the ability to issue remote wipes? That's just asking for a slew of lawsuits against carriers for improperly erasing someone's personal data. (Most "hacking" is just social engineering.... Someone pretends to be a person they're not, makes a phone call or two and says the right things, and convinces some customer service person to do their bidding.)
The fact you can blacklist a phone from ever getting activated on a carrier's network is already an extra theft-deterrent not available to most electronics products people might steal (such as digital cameras, car stereos, etc.).
The Internet wasn't originally designed to handle MOST types of traffic it handles today. Never-mind the streaming video thing.... It certainly didn't envision VoIP telephony or P2P sharing protocols. I don't think anyone even thought about such things as IPSEC VPN tunneling back then.
In reality, the Internet should handle pretty much anything we can conceive of that can be sent over it following the basic rules of TCP/IP, as long as bandwidth is sufficient and latency low enough for the purpose.
If a business tries to offer a service (whether HD video streaming or anything else) that it lacks the Internet capacity to provide reliably, the whole problem lies with them and their implementation.
To abuse the ever-popular automobile analogy once again? Sometimes it's as though a company decides to build a vehicle so wide, it occupies 6 lanes of traffic. Then people start having a discussion about the problems it causes when it takes up an entire highway including a couple of lanes designated as "HOV" only. (I see the net neutrality arguments here as being somewhat like folks arguing over if the company building this super-wide vehicle should or shouldn't be allowed to buy a special permit to occupy the HOV lanes, so it can get through.)
The better question is probably asking why they decided to build something so darn wide in the first place? Maybe building it extra long, or just using multiple, smaller vehicles would have been a better design choice from the start?
If you're having issues pushing streaming SuperHD quality video reliably? Maybe you should quit concerning yourself with whether or not you can purchase a higher QoS over the existing infrastructure so it transmits better, and start asking if you're just trying to do something that's not technically advisable in the first place. We've come a long way with such things as improved video compression methods. There might not be a lot of room to squeeze more out of that... but maybe this is one of those areas where the existing cable TV infrastructure starts making more sense? (If you want to keep cable television subscriptions viable, morph them into super/ultra/whatever HD quality services delivered right to your set-top box over all that bandwidth the cable network has, and let people use the regular Internet to stream the lower resolution stuff.)
The scanning is done client-side, which means it's just an internal function of the software.
It isn't divulging any of your internet browsing or usage history. It's just combing the local cache for specific things, and is a process it doesn't even do in the first place unless a user is suspected of trying to abuse Valve's gaming environment by cheating.
If the TOS has to state an app is going to access your local DNS cache, then Windows operating systems are probably in violation themselves!
I'm not confident LTE 5G will really be much of a viable competitor?
I think it will be a great option for a lot of people who are still stuck in areas with no reasonable broadband choices. (You can put up a tower and suddenly provide this service to rural customers who could only do DSL at 3-6Mbits over a phone line, or go with satellite otherwise.)
But as even AT&T admitted in a talk about broadband deployment I attended a while back... The wireless transmitters still rely on wired back-hauls to central offices. They just shift the need for a wired connection from individual customers to a little bit further away, where the antenna sits. If you over-subscribe wireless customers to any one tower, the bandwidth drops off significantly and you're back to slow, unreliable Internet for people.
Glad this was already modded up or I would have done so!
The content is garbage, by and large. Sure, you've got the fans of certain TV series' who go on and on about how great they are, and I don't really disagree. I may not personally find some of them interesting, but I can see that so many others do -- it'd be foolish to claim it wasn't entertaining television for many people.
I'm talking about the fact that when you randomly channel surf on a given day, you can go through 100 plus channels and not find a THING worth paying for! Typically on my FiOS subscription, I see a bunch of re-runs of old TV shows that I've seen for decades for free, via OTA local stations (stuff like Rosanne, Two and a Half Men, etc. etc.). Lots of reality TV nonsense of varying quality -- but nothing I'd willingly pay good money to pipe in each month. A few sports games going on (which again is worth zero to me, and probably not worth much to most people unless the particular teams playing each other happen to be on someone's personal favorite's list). Infomercials, TV evangelists and live televised masses in churches, home shopping network junk.... have I forgotten anything?
Only reason I haven't "cut the cord" on all of this is because my wife wants to pay for it, just so she can watch 2 or 3 shows she's into. It really makes no economic sense.
It's obvious the cable networks don't want to do a-la-carte because it would illustrate how worthless most of it is! Everyone would sign up for a few stations and 90% of them would have to be given away as "bonus" material to get people to take them.
If you ask me, the ones with quality, original series running regularly (mostly your former "premium movie stations" like HBO or Showtime) should just go online exclusively and cut the cord too! Tell the cable networks,. "Sorry guys... We can sell this content just fine without involving you piping it over your services first!"
From the summary of this article, I was just trying to wrap my head around how this college student could have gotten himself into this predicament. My first suspicion was he didn't read the terms and conditions carefully enough when he was asked for permission to share some of his photos. (I figured, "Ok... maybe he just saw the part about them wanting to put them on their Facebook page and didn't notice some fine print releasing the photos for all promotional uses?")
But unless there's more to this story than what's being told? "The Color Run" is simply owned by a guy who's being a complete asshole. Receiving a letter asking to be fairly compensated for the use of photographs in commercial material, after you *only* received permission to share them on Facebook, is hardly "extortion"!
And trying to add on additional charges against the student seeking just compensation, by claiming he owes them for trademark infringement because the "Color Run" name and logo showed up in some of the photos?! Yeah.... I think not, buddy.
Poolesville is a small town about an hour outside of Washington D.C. Our population is only about 5,500 and it's basically a farm community that grew into more of a distant bedroom community for DC metro area employees in the last decade or two.
Around here, they've been very efficient at clearing a path through the snow, even though we've got about 11-12 inches of it this morning (and expect 2 more in a second wave late this afternoon).
I've noticed with many of the more rural Maryland communities, they seem to do better job plowing snow and keeping the roads clear than the bigger cities do. I'm sure the fact we have a lot fewer roads to clear is a big part of it, but some of the towns like Brunswick are very hilly, so you'd think they'd be a difficult challenge. Nonetheless, they seem to have workers who have a real commitment to doing the job well, and perhaps the more rural upbringing makes them more adept at handling heavy equipment like snowplows and dump trucks? (I'm sure many of them know their way around large tractors and other farm equipment.)
Slashdot has become something greater than the sum of its parts, in many ways.
If I show this site to someone who has never seen it before, their first impression is that it's some type of technology blog. After examining it more closely though, readers soon realize that's not true -- because the site doesn't consist of articles written by staff members running the site. Then, they conclude that it's a technology news aggregator. This is a little more accurate, but still misses what makes it worthwhile.
Anyone can put together a site that collects up the latest news items posted by others in a certain topic, and almost all who do bolt on some type of comment system so readers can respond to the articles too.
Slashdot has grown to where it has an active community of regular users who often know as much or MORE about the topics than the people writing the original articles it references. IMO, it's quite rare to find this happening on the Internet. If you successfully get a group of very knowledgeable people together on one web site to regularly discuss their area(s) of expertise, it's typically a message forum -- which is a different format.
The magic that makes Slashdot special, IMO, is the fact that you can visit regularly to keep up with cutting edge technology news and happenings, but THEN by reading the comments, you get a much deeper understanding of each of the original topics. Perhaps you can even contribute insight of your own, and if you do - you'll receive feedback (by way of rating your post up or down), which in turn helps you know if your own contributions are really useful, or just a waste of people's time and bandwidth.
If Slashdot's owners are out to "modernize/pretty up" the site in hopes of attracting a bigger audience? I think they're on the wrong track. If that tactic attracts a bigger group of site visitors, it only does so by watering down the talent pool that makes Slashdot work. The core group using the site today are perfectly content with the current site layout, IMO, and any changes should just be functional ones. (You say you can increase site performance and reliability with a "beneath the surface" code improvement? Go for it! You say you can add some sort of new, improved search functionality? Ok, I'm all ears. But you just want it to draw more color images and use more font styles so it doesn't appear "dated"? Yeah.... I think I'll pass.....)
I never met a person yet who avoided using Craigslist to post a free classified ad because "the site just looks too plain with all that straight ASCII text".
Not a software developer myself, but I worked closely with a group of them for years....
I'd say MillerHighLife21 is absolutely right. Any developer who actually has *some* level of pride in his/her work will usually be happy to explain the code to you, if you've taken on working on their original project.
Someone else posted that you "can't win" because even if you fix it completely, it's the original author who will come back and take all the credit. That could well be true, but let's face it.... you're a contractor, not a full-time employee. IMO, that's part of the deal with working as a contractor. You're often paid to make somebody else look good. Your end of the bargain is a decent paycheck, at an hourly rate often as much as 2x or more what the full-time staff gets paid.
If that's an issue for you, then I'd have to ask why you aren't pursuing full-time employment, where the company has more of a vested interest in you (and you in them)?
I think you can accomplish this goal with the help of some communication with the original developer, and a tactful approach where you're not insinuating the problems with the code have anything to do with his/her lacking in coding abilities. (Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't -- but either way, the situation is what now affords you the opportunity to get paid to work on it!)
IMO, it's pretty childish to carry on about whether Linux is beating Max OS X in game sales, or which platform has the bigger market-share.
The reality of things is, OS X game development has always lagged far behind Windows because so many developers got behind Microsoft's Direct-X and didn't opt to code for OpenGL. In those cases, the only time you got a Mac release was when one of the Mac only companies deemed the game worthy of doing a ground-up conversion of the code to make it OS X compatible. (Aspyr and MacPlay used to be your two main companies with expertise in this area and I guess Feral Interactive is more of a contender now.) Typically, these Mac conversions not only ran with far poorer frame-rates than the Windows counterparts, but took 6 months to a year before getting released, after the Windows version was out and sold many, many copies.
Historically, when a popular game title was released for Windows with OpenGL support, OS X versions came along fairly quickly afterwards. (Doom 1, 2 and 3 for example.... the Quake series.... even games like Soldier of Fortune 1 and 2, Postal, Redneck Rampage, and pretty much all the stuff Blizzard ever makes) Usually, this meant, by extension, a Linux release was possible.
At this point though, I'd say the entire COMPUTER gaming market is a dying thing. Consoles have far surpassed everything else in sheer number of new titles. The SteamBox, while trying to pretend it's just another console like a PS3 or XBox, really has deeper roots in the computer gaming scene -- so I think its success or failure is going to have more to do with what the computer game devs decide to code, moving forward.
I'm of the opinion that a new title announcing Linux support is good news for Mac OS X users, because it shouldn't take a lot of work to port it as a Mac version. And the same holds true for going the other direction -- making a Linux version of something initially designed for a Mac. The real enemy for all of us are the big name console makers. Microsoft doesn't have a reason to care anymore if Windows game titles sell. They're just as happy to sell it to you for the XBox. Sony and Nintendo will keep on paying developers to build top notch new titles just for their proprietary systems, to encourage further sales of the hardware.
I will say, though, it's also worth noting that Apple REALLY needs to step things up in the graphics support department. Even the high $ new Mac Pro is proving to struggle in some areas when rendering using professional packages compared to Windows versions of the same software packages, simply because Apple's ATI drivers just aren't as optimized as the ones provided for Windows on FirePro series cards. I'm not sue any of that really caused Macs to lose out on getting new game titles though. I think when the software companies felt it would sell, they went ahead with Mac versions anyway and just quoted higher minimum hardware specs on the box to compensate.
I don't think "everyone does this" is any kind of justification for doing something wrong. An act doesn't become justified simply based on the number of people who engage in it.
IMO, spying is really something that needs to go away, except against enemy nations during wartime. It puts the person hired as the spy in a very risky situation, being paid to lie and steal information for a government that has no entitlement to receive it in the first place.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if most spy operations go on today primarily because, "The other guys are doing it back to us, so we HAVE to." Sounds like preschool logic to me.
So in that sense, I don't hold Snowden accountable for leaking some of that information. Most of the feigned outrage on the part of other nations is probably just posturing to begin with. Pretty sure the higher-ups already knew the U.S. was spying on them before Snowden "revealed" it.
The key here is the question specifically about *solar* power. When you look at the sum total amount of energy we consume, I think you'll find that you'd have to blanket a pretty significant portion of the usable surface of the earth with panels to provide all of it, if you went strictly solar.
(From a solar energy FAQ): Q: How much roof space is needed? A: A rule of thumb is 100 sq. ft. per every kilowatt (kW) of electricity the PV system produces. Module efficiency correlates with the power that is generated in a given amount of roof space. For basic planning purposes, a good rule of thumb is 10-12 watts per square foot.
10-12 watts of power generated per square foot just isn't a heck of a lot, in the grand scheme of things.
You have to couple that with the fact that battery storage isn't anywhere near 100% efficient. (Batteries "leak" power even when they sit idle for a while.)
I think electric cars will have growing usefulness, but not everyplace gets a lot of sunshine during the average day. So even companies setting up solar charging stations in parking spaces for people to plug in vehicles during the work day won't be an adequate solution everywhere.
Ultimately, I see a situation where we substitute some fossil fuel use for increased nuclear power (for the big energy generation happening at large power plants), some hydrogen fuel cell tech gaining acceptance, solar and batteries as supplemental power where applicable, a little wind energy (again where applicable), and in the shorter-term at least, more use of natural gas vs. oil or coal.
IMO, gentrification is a "thing"... It happens all over the country, and as often as not, it winds up a net benefit to a city's economy. EG. Memphis, TN, where my wife is originally from? If you drive around most of Memphis these days, it almost all looks run down. It's no coincidence that the vast majority of postcards and promotional photos for Memphis depict parts of Beale Street. That's one of the last remaining streets in the whole city that still looks like it's flourishing, thanks to all the tourism directed towards the famous restaurants and clubs there. And the truth is, there's really no good reason it needs to be that way. Among other things, Memphis is the nation's hub for FedEx -- no small company! They've seen a gentrification underway in parts of midtown Memphis though, which finally brings in a crowd with some interest in rehabbing some of the old buildings and revitalizes some business in the area. I suppose if you're one of the low income residents from that area, it seems like it's pushing you and your family out? But bottom line is, there's just not a benefit to discouraging people with more spending money to make part of a city their home.
I think the protesting of Google buses and the rest of it is insanity. The whole country knows perfectly well that cost of living anywhere near Silicon Valley is one of the highest in the nation. Nobody I know ventures out that way without that understanding. If you find you can't afford to live there anymore because you don't earn as much as more successful people getting hired in your town? Tough.... Probably time to move out (and sell your home at a big profit while you're at it, if you're not renting).
I live near Washington DC myself, and our family struggles with the exact same issue out here. Home prices out here are insanely high, thanks to all the overpaid politicians and government contractors out here, not to mention high ranking military/ex-military just across the border in Virginia. So what did we do? Moved out a little further to a more rural area where it was more affordable, and deal with the commute. It sucks, but I see no point in trying to fight economic realities. (And I feel like in my case, I'd actually have MORE justification to complain than if I was upset about private businesses like Google running up home prices and tax rates. In this case, a lot of it is funded via my tax dollars!)
I think all of the factors mentioned in the original article are valid contributors.
But the Internet factor is probably a little more complex than just "teens just socialize online these days".
There's also the fact that with the internet, you can work from anywhere with a usable connection. Younger people making a living doing software development or web design, technical writing, or other jobs along these lines can do them from home, or from a coffee house down the block. There's no need to drive in to an office every day.
Additionally, it's possible to order just about anything you want to buy online. I wouldn't say it fully replaces shopping in physical stores, but it reduces the need. That just makes one more reason a teen can get by without needing a car. When I was a teenager, going to the mall was a big part of socializing with friends -- as well as your primary way to obtain new music or movies, or even gadgets from stores like Radio Shack. Today, malls are usually dying or surviving by catering to the high end customer. They're no longer a magnet for teens as a destination.
It's probably largely a result of all of this, but I see youth today taking much less interest in cars too. Sure, you still have the occasional "gear head" or enthusiast out there. But it's not like it was when I was growing up, where you'd almost always find someone in a classroom with a copy of one of the automotive or motorcycle magaines, and pictures of some exotic sports car taped to the inside of a locker door. Cars, today, are sold based on the electronic features in them as much as anything else. Many kids don't care what they drive as long as it's cheap to operate and has a cool stereo in it.
While I don't even consider myself among the "deniers"... I think you have to be going around with a big, thick blindfold on, if you really believe the "pro climate change" researchers aren't getting some money out of it.
The federal government wants to push climate change as its platform to encourage all sorts of initiatives, and to do so, it needs the backing of numerous scientific studies. Most researchers sustain themselves largely based on government grants. Even NASA has been a big climate change proponent in recent years, vs. focusing on the space travel projects we traditionally associate with it. Why do you think THAT is? All the funding cutbacks in space exploration mean they need to find something else to do that IS funded, or else they vanish.
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I agree with your observations, but not with you conclusions.
It's true that, especially for touch-screen capable devices, Windows 8 satisfies the casual user and less computer-savvy. The only reason these people find it usable is the ease of which one can launch a basic selection of apps from the Metro UI. It's like having a big program launcher / menu system bolted onto the front of everything.
The millennials are pretty fixated on "cloud based services and apps" right now. You could give them a modern day dumb terminal with good web surfing capabilities and all of the popular sites made into icons and they'd be happy. (Well, you might have to make it run MS Word and Excel too, since they typically learned those programs in school and don't like the web-based alternatives so much.)
Your suggestion of using Windows 7 instead and the response that it's "for old people" sounds like the dismissive behavior I'd get from our pre-teen kids... but doesn't mean the entire face of computing has changed.
People who actually want to do real work with a computer aren't exactly praising the Windows 8 UI as the future. Microsoft is trying really hard to sell it that way, but it's struggling. The whole Nokia merger and the in-fighting surrounding it indicates MS is a company desperate to find other revenue streams. Basically, it doesn't really believe in Windows 8 itself -- so it wants to bolster it by retaining some leverage in the mobile phone space.
I may be one of those geeks who "used to laugh at those who refused to adapt to change", but back then, the changes were truly innovative leaps forward. When you tried to get people using MS-DOS to move to a GUI environment that supported multi-tasking, automatic support for all of the RAM in the machine, cross-application support for printers and audio devices and SO much more, it was a leap worth taking. When I compare Windows 8 to Apple's approach with OS X for desktops and iOS for smaller devices, the Apple method makes a lot more sense to me. Win 8 isn't really giving me back anything that makes it worth re-learning where they hid all of the settings and options.
If a law is made this quickly, it could ALSO mean it just seems like such a common sense thing to the people involved, there's really nothing to argue about.
Personally, I think I'd rather have legislation made this way (flawed though it may be) than people passing multiple hundred page long bills that NOBODY could read through and fully understand before they're voted on.
Simple, quickly passed legislation can also be easily understood by juries and amended, as needed. The massive stuff with hundreds of hidden side-effects just catches people by surprise, time and time again, for decades to come.
How would this even be an issue? When you shoot video, do you irresponsibly just upload it to the Internet for public viewing, immediately, without so much as previewing what you filmed first?
I've always assumed that 80% of the work of recording video is the editing you do AFTER you're captured the initial footage!
IMO, at 30, you're right in the "zone" as far as the age group companies like to hire for computer support or network/server administration.
(Honestly, I think there's greater interest in hiring younger for software development, due to the mentality that you can hire talent cheap if you catch them shortly after they're out of school. Plus, they haven't been in the field long enough to be "old dogs that know a bunch of tricks you have to get them to un-learn" for your particular environment.)
It sounds like part of your question relates to which technologies you should focus on learning? One trend I have noticed is that mail servers are becoming more and more centralized. Most growing companies want to eliminate the in-house mail server(s) and sub-contract that out. With the growth of mobile devices that get attached to corporate email, it's nice to offload that bandwidth usage to a 3rd. party, among other things. This has the side-effect of making knowledge of setup/configuration/maintenance of mail servers (like Exchange) a skill-set that gives you a full-time job working only with email. If you really like email and mail servers, great. Go this route and get hired on at one of the cloud-based email services out there! Otherwise, I'd only worry about knowing it from the client side.
Every company I've ever worked at could stand to have more I.T. people on staff with good training skills and an interest in doing it. The "gotcha" there is that usually? It boils down to a situation where you won't really get to do as much of that as you and your co-workers would like because management has other ideas about what's the most valuable use of your time and company resources. (Remember, if you decide to schedule a "training session" for a big group in one of the conference rooms? Now the productivity of ALL of those people attending just dropped to 0 during the time you've got them as a captive audience in there. You're also occupying the room, which may also pose at least some level of inconvenience -- especially if employees regularly book the room to pitch a service or product your company makes to its clients. You'll probably also find that without providing some food and drink, it's tough to get people to show up for such things... so again, another expense for the company.)
I've always found that good communication skills and ability to teach the software is a really valuable skill, but you'll primarily wind up using it randomly, when assisting people by phone or "one on one" at their desks with issues. If you're lucky, a hiring manager will give you more consideration than "the next applicant" because of a background teaching technology. But it will become "just another thing you do that's kind of taken for granted" once you're hired.
Especially if you're getting hired via a recruiting firm, they're overly fixated on industry "buzzwords". Certain items are considered "hot" at any given time. For the last couple years or so, "virtualization" was a big one. If you could say you had experience using VMWare ESXi or any of the other products allowing virtual servers, it was a big plus. "Cloud" knowledge is another one. IMO, this is really a bunch of nonsense, because almost ALL the cloud-based services have easy to use web based control panels. Anyone with good general I.T. skills and knowledge can master any of them in short order. Mastering virtual server products is a little more difficult and useful as a real skill .... but again, many places just treated it like it was a big deal, only because of a one-off desire to reduce the number of servers in a server room. Once somebody moved all 7 or 8 of those outdated physical servers onto one virtual server and got them running well? There wasn't a whole lot more to do or know to maintain that.... so other I.T. skills become more important again.
The Radio Shack I knew and loved, growing up, was one of the early computer stores, among other things. The TRS-80 line of 8-bit computers, despite being much maligned by proponents of competing brands ("Trash 80" as they liked to call them), were solid, reliable and capable computers in their day. I *still* know several people who have their old TRS-80 Model 3 or 4 computers in good, working condition to this day. (If you purchased that optional dust cover Radio Shack used to sell for them, and used it religiously, the machine might even LOOK almost like new!)
The parent poster is also correct that Radio Shack home stereo equipment was pretty good stuff, all in all. Like every brand, they sold a few "duds" too, but products like the old Minimus 7 die-cast metal bookshelf speakers were even critically acclaimed in magazines like Stereo Review. (They eventually got renamed Optimus 7, with the 77 being a larger wattage version with about an inch larger woofer.) I believe some of their component stereo receivers were made for them by Pioneer, but designed custom for Radio Shack so not just identical to Pioneer models for sale elsewhere.
Radio Shack used to also be one of only a few really good "go to" places for things like police scanners, weather radios or shortwave radios. Sure, other brands were arguably "better" but were typically only available by mail order or at specialty shops. At least with Radio Shack, you could recommend a particular one and know anyone could run down the street and grab it at their nearest store. The availability of some of these also meant readily available hardware modifications. (I remember downloading instructions on how to cut one capacitor off of a board in one of my Radio Shack scanners to unlock the ability to scan a whole portion of the frequency spectrum that was otherwise locked out. Pretty cool enhancement for nothing but the cost of my time to open it up and cut one thing.)
When they tried to change into a mini Best Buy type of store, they really went downhill fast, IMO. I guess that was an attempt to appeal to the masses, who were less interested in electronics projects and hacking, and more interested in buying off the shelf accessories and gadgets. But too many retailers already did that better than Radio Shack ever could with their smaller stores.
At this point, I agree that R/S may need to cut back and close quite a few stores -- but it could do well to focus the remaining ones on electronics for true hobbyists and electricians, IMO. Drop the prices so they're really competitive, especially on items like ethernet cabling and jacks. Carry a full line of quality tools like phone linemen's handsets, punch-down tools and "fox and hound" toners/probes, but sell them below the high prices of places like Greybar! IMO, there's no room to make any money selling computers anymore. R/S just needs to step out of that area -- other than maybe stocking a few common items like USB memory sticks or SD cards. But definitely go back to carrying a full line of soldering irons, solder remover tools, maybe an R/S branded oscilloscope ....
I'm more than happy to defend the concept behind crypto-currency ... unregulated by governments and all!
What I find a bit humorous are all the people who were so greedy and eager to make a quick buck on bitcoin that they immediately exchanged considerable amounts of traditional, govt. backed funds for it, only to park the bitcoin in one of these public exchanges. Then they're all happy and excited, until the site gets hacked and their bitcoin disappears (or an unscrupulous operator take the money himself, pretending it was a hack involved, and shutters the site). All of a sudden, "the sky is falling" because nobody is there to come to their rescue, to get back the lost crypto.
ALL of this was perfectly well known as risks of using a decentralized currency from day 1! By keeping the bulk of your crypto in a personal encrypted wallet and making sure you have backups in safe places (on a USB stick kept in a safe deposit box, perhaps?), you would never encounter any of these issues.
IMO, the only "right" way to trade on these exchanges is to push funds in only when you're ready to trade them. Do your trade, and extract your resulting funds again, ASAP. Sure, you *might* lose that money if something goes bad in the middle of your transaction -- but that's, IMO, a much more acceptable risk.
Start treating bitcoin more like cash, people! Would you just hand, $10,000 or $20,000 in cash to some stranger, because he promises you he'll enable you to buy something else with it of greater value, if you just leave it with him for a while until the right moment comes along?
The 3 auto makers offering it first are all high-end luxury brands. That means the "early adopters" are the same people who have plenty of disposable income to have already purchased superior options.
(Personally, if I had they money to be driving around a Ferrari, I would already have a really nice custom stereo system in it, which would surely have a dedicated GPS system in it. Why get stuck in a situation where you can't find some place you need to get to, just because you accidentally left your phone at home or at work?)
This integration makes a lot of sense, but I think the people who will get the most out of it are the masses driving inexpensive economy cars, minivans, pickups, and mid priced sedans or sporty cars. (Again, the wealthy have the means to pay for "concierge" services by phone where they can make requests of a live operator who answers. Why settle for an automated system like Siri?)
Not to sound like a jerk -- but when you have to start worrying that accepting a software upgrade on the iOS side will mean it breaks functionality with the piece on the OS X side, that's your sign that it's time to upgrade OS X.
I know all about the people clinging onto Snow Leopard because of either a claimed need for Rosetta, or being one of those systems that was kind of "caught in the middle" when things were transitioning -- with a "Core" series CPU, yet one that's only 32-bits.
But I don't think you can really expect Apple to keep supporting your environment any longer, if you're still holding on to OS X 10.6. Like it or not, Apple has pretty clearly been following a trend of giving support only for the current revision of OS X and the previous version. So far with Mavericks, they've actually been extending that support back 2 versions (both Lion and Mountain Lion), but regardless? When you're a full 3 versions behind the current one, you really shouldn't expect Apple to give you answers other than "upgrade" when you complain about a lack of security patches or functionality with newer software releases.
Personally, I don't even believe Rosetta is needed by many of the people who think it is. There's a free product called SheepShaver out there which emulates classic MacOS even under Mavericks, and I know of at least one project out there that uses it as the "engine" to run the old WordPerfect for Mac software on today's machines. So that's one way to make even pre PPC era software run on a new machine.
I'm sure there are other niche cases, such as older software synthesizers that never got upgraded past the old PPC versions, but why would you even need such a machine to stay online all the time, and therefore need the latest security fixes? Just leave it on Snow Leopard or whatever and use it as a stand-alone music creation box.
Same is true for cars..... yet not everyone is interested in all the extra work that entails.
The quality of his analogy isn't really that relevant. The fact is, he's right.... The way theft is handled with just about every other piece of consumer electronics gear you can think of is to make the OWNER responsible for its safe-keeping. If it's stolen, you can potentially make an insurance claim, and certainly you can file a police report. But giving a third party (such as the cellular carrier) the ability to issue remote wipes? That's just asking for a slew of lawsuits against carriers for improperly erasing someone's personal data. (Most "hacking" is just social engineering.... Someone pretends to be a person they're not, makes a phone call or two and says the right things, and convinces some customer service person to do their bidding.)
The fact you can blacklist a phone from ever getting activated on a carrier's network is already an extra theft-deterrent not available to most electronics products people might steal (such as digital cameras, car stereos, etc.).
The Internet wasn't originally designed to handle MOST types of traffic it handles today. Never-mind the streaming video thing.... It certainly didn't envision VoIP telephony or P2P sharing protocols. I don't think anyone even thought about such things as IPSEC VPN tunneling back then.
In reality, the Internet should handle pretty much anything we can conceive of that can be sent over it following the basic rules of TCP/IP, as long as bandwidth is sufficient and latency low enough for the purpose.
If a business tries to offer a service (whether HD video streaming or anything else) that it lacks the Internet capacity to provide reliably, the whole problem lies with them and their implementation.
To abuse the ever-popular automobile analogy once again? Sometimes it's as though a company decides to build a vehicle so wide, it occupies 6 lanes of traffic. Then people start having a discussion about the problems it causes when it takes up an entire highway including a couple of lanes designated as "HOV" only. (I see the net neutrality arguments here as being somewhat like folks arguing over if the company building this super-wide vehicle should or shouldn't be allowed to buy a special permit to occupy the HOV lanes, so it can get through.)
The better question is probably asking why they decided to build something so darn wide in the first place? Maybe building it extra long, or just using multiple, smaller vehicles would have been a better design choice from the start?
If you're having issues pushing streaming SuperHD quality video reliably? Maybe you should quit concerning yourself with whether or not you can purchase a higher QoS over the existing infrastructure so it transmits better, and start asking if you're just trying to do something that's not technically advisable in the first place. We've come a long way with such things as improved video compression methods. There might not be a lot of room to squeeze more out of that... but maybe this is one of those areas where the existing cable TV infrastructure starts making more sense? (If you want to keep cable television subscriptions viable, morph them into super/ultra/whatever HD quality services delivered right to your set-top box over all that bandwidth the cable network has, and let people use the regular Internet to stream the lower resolution stuff.)
The scanning is done client-side, which means it's just an internal function of the software.
It isn't divulging any of your internet browsing or usage history. It's just combing the local cache for specific things, and is a process it doesn't even do in the first place unless a user is suspected of trying to abuse Valve's gaming environment by cheating.
If the TOS has to state an app is going to access your local DNS cache, then Windows operating systems are probably in violation themselves!
I'm not confident LTE 5G will really be much of a viable competitor?
I think it will be a great option for a lot of people who are still stuck in areas with no reasonable broadband choices. (You can put up a tower and suddenly provide this service to rural customers who could only do DSL at 3-6Mbits over a phone line, or go with satellite otherwise.)
But as even AT&T admitted in a talk about broadband deployment I attended a while back ... The wireless transmitters still rely on wired back-hauls to central offices. They just shift the need for a wired connection from individual customers to a little bit further away, where the antenna sits. If you over-subscribe wireless customers to any one tower, the bandwidth drops off significantly and you're back to slow, unreliable Internet for people.
Glad this was already modded up or I would have done so!
The content is garbage, by and large. Sure, you've got the fans of certain TV series' who go on and on about how great they are, and I don't really disagree. I may not personally find some of them interesting, but I can see that so many others do -- it'd be foolish to claim it wasn't entertaining television for many people.
I'm talking about the fact that when you randomly channel surf on a given day, you can go through 100 plus channels and not find a THING worth paying for! Typically on my FiOS subscription, I see a bunch of re-runs of old TV shows that I've seen for decades for free, via OTA local stations (stuff like Rosanne, Two and a Half Men, etc. etc.). Lots of reality TV nonsense of varying quality -- but nothing I'd willingly pay good money to pipe in each month. A few sports games going on (which again is worth zero to me, and probably not worth much to most people unless the particular teams playing each other happen to be on someone's personal favorite's list). Infomercials, TV evangelists and live televised masses in churches, home shopping network junk .... have I forgotten anything?
Only reason I haven't "cut the cord" on all of this is because my wife wants to pay for it, just so she can watch 2 or 3 shows she's into. It really makes no economic sense.
It's obvious the cable networks don't want to do a-la-carte because it would illustrate how worthless most of it is! Everyone would sign up for a few stations and 90% of them would have to be given away as "bonus" material to get people to take them.
If you ask me, the ones with quality, original series running regularly (mostly your former "premium movie stations" like HBO or Showtime) should just go online exclusively and cut the cord too! Tell the cable networks,. "Sorry guys... We can sell this content just fine without involving you piping it over your services first!"
From the summary of this article, I was just trying to wrap my head around how this college student could have gotten himself into this predicament. My first suspicion was he didn't read the terms and conditions carefully enough when he was asked for permission to share some of his photos. (I figured, "Ok... maybe he just saw the part about them wanting to put them on their Facebook page and didn't notice some fine print releasing the photos for all promotional uses?")
But unless there's more to this story than what's being told? "The Color Run" is simply owned by a guy who's being a complete asshole. Receiving a letter asking to be fairly compensated for the use of photographs in commercial material, after you *only* received permission to share them on Facebook, is hardly "extortion"!
And trying to add on additional charges against the student seeking just compensation, by claiming he owes them for trademark infringement because the "Color Run" name and logo showed up in some of the photos?! Yeah.... I think not, buddy.
Poolesville is a small town about an hour outside of Washington D.C. Our population is only about 5,500 and it's basically a farm community that grew into more of a distant bedroom community for DC metro area employees in the last decade or two.
Around here, they've been very efficient at clearing a path through the snow, even though we've got about 11-12 inches of it this morning (and expect 2 more in a second wave late this afternoon).
I've noticed with many of the more rural Maryland communities, they seem to do better job plowing snow and keeping the roads clear than the bigger cities do. I'm sure the fact we have a lot fewer roads to clear is a big part of it, but some of the towns like Brunswick are very hilly, so you'd think they'd be a difficult challenge. Nonetheless, they seem to have workers who have a real commitment to doing the job well, and perhaps the more rural upbringing makes them more adept at handling heavy equipment like snowplows and dump trucks? (I'm sure many of them know their way around large tractors and other farm equipment.)
Because I hate it when people start talking on their cellphone in a theater during a feature presentation!
There oughta be a LAW .....
Yep, it's about that stupid. Theaters have done just fine throwing people out of movies without the help of legislation for many decades.
Slashdot has become something greater than the sum of its parts, in many ways.
If I show this site to someone who has never seen it before, their first impression is that it's some type of technology blog. After examining it more closely though, readers soon realize that's not true -- because the site doesn't consist of articles written by staff members running the site. Then, they conclude that it's a technology news aggregator. This is a little more accurate, but still misses what makes it worthwhile.
Anyone can put together a site that collects up the latest news items posted by others in a certain topic, and almost all who do bolt on some type of comment system so readers can respond to the articles too.
Slashdot has grown to where it has an active community of regular users who often know as much or MORE about the topics than the people writing the original articles it references. IMO, it's quite rare to find this happening on the Internet. If you successfully get a group of very knowledgeable people together on one web site to regularly discuss their area(s) of expertise, it's typically a message forum -- which is a different format.
The magic that makes Slashdot special, IMO, is the fact that you can visit regularly to keep up with cutting edge technology news and happenings, but THEN by reading the comments, you get a much deeper understanding of each of the original topics. Perhaps you can even contribute insight of your own, and if you do - you'll receive feedback (by way of rating your post up or down), which in turn helps you know if your own contributions are really useful, or just a waste of people's time and bandwidth.
If Slashdot's owners are out to "modernize/pretty up" the site in hopes of attracting a bigger audience? I think they're on the wrong track. If that tactic attracts a bigger group of site visitors, it only does so by watering down the talent pool that makes Slashdot work. The core group using the site today are perfectly content with the current site layout, IMO, and any changes should just be functional ones. (You say you can increase site performance and reliability with a "beneath the surface" code improvement? Go for it! You say you can add some sort of new, improved search functionality? Ok, I'm all ears. But you just want it to draw more color images and use more font styles so it doesn't appear "dated"? Yeah.... I think I'll pass.....)
I never met a person yet who avoided using Craigslist to post a free classified ad because "the site just looks too plain with all that straight ASCII text".
Not a software developer myself, but I worked closely with a group of them for years....
I'd say MillerHighLife21 is absolutely right. Any developer who actually has *some* level of pride in his/her work will usually be happy to explain the code to you, if you've taken on working on their original project.
Someone else posted that you "can't win" because even if you fix it completely, it's the original author who will come back and take all the credit. That could well be true, but let's face it.... you're a contractor, not a full-time employee. IMO, that's part of the deal with working as a contractor. You're often paid to make somebody else look good. Your end of the bargain is a decent paycheck, at an hourly rate often as much as 2x or more what the full-time staff gets paid.
If that's an issue for you, then I'd have to ask why you aren't pursuing full-time employment, where the company has more of a vested interest in you (and you in them)?
I think you can accomplish this goal with the help of some communication with the original developer, and a tactful approach where you're not insinuating the problems with the code have anything to do with his/her lacking in coding abilities. (Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't -- but either way, the situation is what now affords you the opportunity to get paid to work on it!)
IMO, it's pretty childish to carry on about whether Linux is beating Max OS X in game sales, or which platform has the bigger market-share.
The reality of things is, OS X game development has always lagged far behind Windows because so many developers got behind Microsoft's Direct-X and didn't opt to code for OpenGL. In those cases, the only time you got a Mac release was when one of the Mac only companies deemed the game worthy of doing a ground-up conversion of the code to make it OS X compatible. (Aspyr and MacPlay used to be your two main companies with expertise in this area and I guess Feral Interactive is more of a contender now.) Typically, these Mac conversions not only ran with far poorer frame-rates than the Windows counterparts, but took 6 months to a year before getting released, after the Windows version was out and sold many, many copies.
Historically, when a popular game title was released for Windows with OpenGL support, OS X versions came along fairly quickly afterwards. (Doom 1, 2 and 3 for example.... the Quake series.... even games like Soldier of Fortune 1 and 2, Postal, Redneck Rampage, and pretty much all the stuff Blizzard ever makes) Usually, this meant, by extension, a Linux release was possible.
At this point though, I'd say the entire COMPUTER gaming market is a dying thing. Consoles have far surpassed everything else in sheer number of new titles. The SteamBox, while trying to pretend it's just another console like a PS3 or XBox, really has deeper roots in the computer gaming scene -- so I think its success or failure is going to have more to do with what the computer game devs decide to code, moving forward.
I'm of the opinion that a new title announcing Linux support is good news for Mac OS X users, because it shouldn't take a lot of work to port it as a Mac version. And the same holds true for going the other direction -- making a Linux version of something initially designed for a Mac. The real enemy for all of us are the big name console makers. Microsoft doesn't have a reason to care anymore if Windows game titles sell. They're just as happy to sell it to you for the XBox. Sony and Nintendo will keep on paying developers to build top notch new titles just for their proprietary systems, to encourage further sales of the hardware.
I will say, though, it's also worth noting that Apple REALLY needs to step things up in the graphics support department. Even the high $ new Mac Pro is proving to struggle in some areas when rendering using professional packages compared to Windows versions of the same software packages, simply because Apple's ATI drivers just aren't as optimized as the ones provided for Windows on FirePro series cards. I'm not sue any of that really caused Macs to lose out on getting new game titles though. I think when the software companies felt it would sell, they went ahead with Mac versions anyway and just quoted higher minimum hardware specs on the box to compensate.
I don't think "everyone does this" is any kind of justification for doing something wrong. An act doesn't become justified simply based on the number of people who engage in it.
IMO, spying is really something that needs to go away, except against enemy nations during wartime. It puts the person hired as the spy in a very risky situation, being paid to lie and steal information for a government that has no entitlement to receive it in the first place.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if most spy operations go on today primarily because, "The other guys are doing it back to us, so we HAVE to." Sounds like preschool logic to me.
So in that sense, I don't hold Snowden accountable for leaking some of that information. Most of the feigned outrage on the part of other nations is probably just posturing to begin with. Pretty sure the higher-ups already knew the U.S. was spying on them before Snowden "revealed" it.
The key here is the question specifically about *solar* power. When you look at the sum total amount of energy we consume, I think you'll find that you'd have to blanket a pretty significant portion of the usable surface of the earth with panels to provide all of it, if you went strictly solar.
(From a solar energy FAQ):
Q: How much roof space is needed?
A: A rule of thumb is 100 sq. ft. per every kilowatt (kW) of electricity the PV system produces. Module efficiency correlates with the power that is generated in a given amount of roof space. For basic planning purposes, a good rule of thumb is 10-12 watts per square foot.
10-12 watts of power generated per square foot just isn't a heck of a lot, in the grand scheme of things.
You have to couple that with the fact that battery storage isn't anywhere near 100% efficient. (Batteries "leak" power even when they sit idle for a while.)
I think electric cars will have growing usefulness, but not everyplace gets a lot of sunshine during the average day. So even companies setting up solar charging stations in parking spaces for people to plug in vehicles during the work day won't be an adequate solution everywhere.
Ultimately, I see a situation where we substitute some fossil fuel use for increased nuclear power (for the big energy generation happening at large power plants), some hydrogen fuel cell tech gaining acceptance, solar and batteries as supplemental power where applicable, a little wind energy (again where applicable), and in the shorter-term at least, more use of natural gas vs. oil or coal.
IMO, gentrification is a "thing" ... It happens all over the country, and as often as not, it winds up a net benefit to a city's economy.
EG. Memphis, TN, where my wife is originally from? If you drive around most of Memphis these days, it almost all looks run down. It's no coincidence that the vast majority of postcards and promotional photos for Memphis depict parts of Beale Street. That's one of the last remaining streets in the whole city that still looks like it's flourishing, thanks to all the tourism directed towards the famous restaurants and clubs there. And the truth is, there's really no good reason it needs to be that way. Among other things, Memphis is the nation's hub for FedEx -- no small company! They've seen a gentrification underway in parts of midtown Memphis though, which finally brings in a crowd with some interest in rehabbing some of the old buildings and revitalizes some business in the area. I suppose if you're one of the low income residents from that area, it seems like it's pushing you and your family out? But bottom line is, there's just not a benefit to discouraging people with more spending money to make part of a city their home.
I think the protesting of Google buses and the rest of it is insanity. The whole country knows perfectly well that cost of living anywhere near Silicon Valley is one of the highest in the nation. Nobody I know ventures out that way without that understanding. If you find you can't afford to live there anymore because you don't earn as much as more successful people getting hired in your town? Tough .... Probably time to move out (and sell your home at a big profit while you're at it, if you're not renting).
I live near Washington DC myself, and our family struggles with the exact same issue out here. Home prices out here are insanely high, thanks to all the overpaid politicians and government contractors out here, not to mention high ranking military/ex-military just across the border in Virginia. So what did we do? Moved out a little further to a more rural area where it was more affordable, and deal with the commute. It sucks, but I see no point in trying to fight economic realities. (And I feel like in my case, I'd actually have MORE justification to complain than if I was upset about private businesses like Google running up home prices and tax rates. In this case, a lot of it is funded via my tax dollars!)
I think all of the factors mentioned in the original article are valid contributors.
But the Internet factor is probably a little more complex than just "teens just socialize online these days".
There's also the fact that with the internet, you can work from anywhere with a usable connection. Younger people making a living doing software development or web design, technical writing, or other jobs along these lines can do them from home, or from a coffee house down the block. There's no need to drive in to an office every day.
Additionally, it's possible to order just about anything you want to buy online. I wouldn't say it fully replaces shopping in physical stores, but it reduces the need. That just makes one more reason a teen can get by without needing a car. When I was a teenager, going to the mall was a big part of socializing with friends -- as well as your primary way to obtain new music or movies, or even gadgets from stores like Radio Shack. Today, malls are usually dying or surviving by catering to the high end customer. They're no longer a magnet for teens as a destination.
It's probably largely a result of all of this, but I see youth today taking much less interest in cars too. Sure, you still have the occasional "gear head" or enthusiast out there. But it's not like it was when I was growing up, where you'd almost always find someone in a classroom with a copy of one of the automotive or motorcycle magaines, and pictures of some exotic sports car taped to the inside of a locker door. Cars, today, are sold based on the electronic features in them as much as anything else. Many kids don't care what they drive as long as it's cheap to operate and has a cool stereo in it.
While I don't even consider myself among the "deniers" ... I think you have to be going around with a big, thick blindfold on, if you really believe the "pro climate change" researchers aren't getting some money out of it.
The federal government wants to push climate change as its platform to encourage all sorts of initiatives, and to do so, it needs the backing of numerous scientific studies. Most researchers sustain themselves largely based on government grants. Even NASA has been a big climate change proponent in recent years, vs. focusing on the space travel projects we traditionally associate with it. Why do you think THAT is? All the funding cutbacks in space exploration mean they need to find something else to do that IS funded, or else they vanish.